Aufgang der Arzney-Kunst

Aufgang der Arzney-Kunst, translated by CHRISTIAN KNORR VON ROSENROTH. Facsimile reprint with contributions by WALTER PAGEL and FREDHELM KEMP, Munich, Kosel-Verlag, 1971, 2 vols., pp. 1414, illus., £37.50. Reviewed by Marianne Winder, Assistant Librarian, Wellcome Institutefor the History of Medicine. J. B. Van Helmont's works were published posthumously under the title Ortus Medicinae in Latin by his son Franciscus Mercurius Van Helmont in 1648. This was translated into English by John Chandler and published in London in 1662, second edition 1664. Though essentially a good translation, it contains errors in many places. There was an inadequate French translation by Jean Leconte published in 1670, merely of a few extracts. The best form in which Van Helmont's works have been made accessible to readers is the German translation by Knorr von Rosenroth published in 1683 of which the work under review is a facsimile reprint. This translation is absolutely correct and, as it were, more than complete because it includes passages otherwise only found in Van Helmont's Flemish works. These Flemish works are different from the Ortus. They were put together by J. B. Van Helmont himself, not by his son like the Ortus Medicinae. The son also collaborated with Knorr von Rosenroth in the German translation. From the account of Rosenroth's life and work by Friedhelm Kemp at the back of volume two of the present reprint one can see how Rosenroth's preoccupation with alchemical and cabalistic studies and his poetic gift made him most suitable to be the translator of such a work. The publishers, however, should not have omitted J. B. Van Helmont's name from their modem title-page though it, of course, appears on the facsimile title-page. But here we have the best version ofVan Helmont's work beautifully produced, typographically satisfying, with a reprint of the original engraving showing the earlier masters of medicine groping for the truth, and with the only reliable portrait of J. B. Van Helmont, except for some vignettes. This is a welcome facsimile reprint of a rare and expensive book in an elegant format, which promises well to be of substantial help to students of medical history as well as of baroque literature and philosophy. Van Helmont's Latin is often obscure as he used complicated sentences and an idiom of his own. Therefore even a German translation is valuable for a better understanding. Of particular topical interest to the reader ofmedical history today is Van Helmont's part in the reformation of the general concept of disease. Following Paracelsus, he denied the traditional ancient view of diseases as an upset of humoral balance (dyscrasia) varying with the individual mixture of humours and qualities. In this view there were no diseases as such, but only diseased individuals. By contrast Van Helmont regarded each disease as a being (Ens) in its own right. What is this Ens morbi? It is not the vital principle (Archeus) of the individual, although his Archeus is the begetter of the morbid Ens, because the Archeus conceives a morbid seed which is the essence of disease. This seed is made active and fertile by virtue of its indwelling idea or image of disease-a distinct plan of action. This idea or image is the Ens Morbi. The image comes into being when the Archeus imagines an object it is becoming desirous of (res imaginata). The objects imagined can be outside morbific agents such as poisons, the saliva of the rabid dog, the virus of plague, in short, what Van Helmont calls the spinae infixae, something of the nature of thorns stuck